New Spalding Club > House of Gordon > Gordons under arms

xlviii HOUSE OF GORDON.
appointed officers of the United States Navy and of the Marine Corps, regular and volunteer.
Compiled by Edward W. Callaghan, Registrar, Bureau of Navigation, Navy Department.
New York, L. R. Hamersley & Co., 1901.
All this material, together with the information contained in the various
editions of Wlio's Who in America, has been arranged by Mrs. Skelton
on the pattern of her own work.
The list is anything but complete. Even Virginia, which has
been ransacked as no other state has been, has gaps, for Mr. Gordon
has excluded the Virginia "County Colonists " of the time of the
Colony, and also officers in the Militia in times of peace, concen-
trating on those who actually bore arms in war. Again the concluding
volumes of John M. Moore's Roster of North Carolina Troops in the Civil
War (which is out of print) have not been searched ; and the absence
in this country of most of those books of infinitesimal historical re-
search, of which the Americans are past masters, must account for
many other gaps.
As it is, we get the following figures from the 218 men mentioned : —
Confederate army 67 North American (and U.S.) army 82
Revolution 54 U.S. Navy 15
The list naturally adds little to our knowledge of the origins of
the American Gordons on this side of the Atlantic, which is the great
stumbling-block of genealogy in America except for a few families.
The initial difficulty occurs not so much in America as in Ireland, from
which so many families emigrated. Scarcely one family of Gordons
in Ireland can trace to any well-known stock, the case of the Sheep-
bridge Gordons, who have given the student so much trouble, being
typical. It is curious that the Scots origins of George Tomline Gordon—
the only man who figures in the Home Army as well as in the American
(Confederate) service- — are also unknown. Of the two other Scots
Gordons who have been in the American service in our own day,
William Augustus, Missouri Infantry, belonged to the Cairnfield and
Rosieburn group, and the Rev. George Angier came from Insch.
There can be no doubt, however, which is the largest family of
Military Gordons in America. The honour belongs to the Gordons of
Middlesex, who produced this group of soldiers : —